


Waiting

by honeybuddhahoe



Category: Devil May Cry, DmC5 - Fandom, DmC: Devil May Cry, dmc4 - Fandom, nerokiri
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 12:06:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18388109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybuddhahoe/pseuds/honeybuddhahoe
Summary: The last thing she heard from him was that he was coming home. That was nearly three weeks ago. Kyrie tries to keep busy, tries to put on a brave face for the children at the orphanage. She's fine with waiting. She could wait forever. But is that how she really feels?





	Waiting

Kyrie placed her head in her hands. They trembled against her forehead. Her body was exhausted, her mind was wide awake. An awful combination. A nap sounded devilishly nice right now. The kids were playing cards a floor above her, the news said that the demon infestation had retreated with the sealing of the portal, twilight was on the horizon. But she felt too anxious to sleep. Nero wasn’t home yet.

She always had trouble sleeping when he was away. In her gut, she knew he would always keep himself safe, and Nico would keep him out of trouble. But there was always that what if. What if he got hurt. What if he didn’t come back. And her fears had been confirmed a few months ago when the hooded stranger ripped Nero’s arm off.

_So much blood._

She raised her head and checked the clock again. 6:10 pm. She lowered her head back down and closed her eyes. Waiting.

 _I’ll wait for you,_  she told him. That horrible day where she was a hostage of His Holiness. That day when Nero saved her and kissed her for the first time.  _I’ll wait._

But for how long?

She honestly felt useless sitting here. There was no greater joy than to care for the orphans, and her faith in Nero was stronger than anything. But watching the clock tick, knowing that it was Nico and Nero alone out there … she wished she could play a bigger role. She wished she could support him in a bigger way. What could she do besides wait? What could she do besides mend his clothes and cook his food?

 _There had to be something,_  she thought, as she rose from the table. But she couldn’t think too much on it otherwise she would just begin worrying again. She made her way upstairs to collect laundry, mend the kids’ clothes. Do something meanwhile.

Just as she reaches the top of the stairs and three of the orphans, Julio, Carlo, and Kyle, sprint past her. They’ve got their baseball gear tucked in their arms.

“Stay in the yard!” she calls.

“Got it!”

“If the ball goes over the fence, yell for me!”

“Yeah, yeah!”

A huff and she moves on. The boys definitely take after Nero. Their sweaters and shirts are always acquiring new tears. They rip holes in their pants faster than she can sew patches. And don’t even get her started on the grass stains.

The phone rings down the hall, and her heart skips a beat. She drops everything, races out of the boy’s room, nearly tripping over her own feet to pick up the phone. She presses the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence for a beat. Then a voice.

“Valued customer! Congratulations! You’ve been selected to—”

She hung up.

The disappointment came in waves. The phone would ring, or there would be a knock on the door, and Kyrie would leap up to answer. She couldn’t help it. The possibility that her waiting was over, that his fighting was done, and he could come home and rest and eat … it made every day of waiting worth it. But when she would see a stranger beyond the door, or hear someone else’s voice, her heart sank, and the rest of her day seemed a little dimmer. It wasn’t that Nero never called her. They talked every now and then. But usually for no more than a minute. He was never alone, and something often came up. A demon in an alley, Nico teasing him with taunts, the end of the world. The usual.

The orphans never knew how she felt. She was a great actress. “When’s Nero coming home?” they would ask. And Kyrie would smile, offer them an extra plate of food as a distraction.

“Soon,” she’d smile. “He promised. We just have to be patient and wait.”

Sometimes she wondered if she was lying to make them feel better or to make herself.

She finished gathering the laundry, took it downstairs, separated them by color. It was easy to tell whose was whose. Her clothes were always kept in good shape since she rarely let the orphanage. The children’s were a little worse for wear since they were prone to play. And Nero’s were either bloodstained or full of holes.

She came across one of Nero’s better shirts. Slowly, almost guiltily, she raised it to her face to smell it. It was faint, but there. _Him._

“Kyrie?”

She jumped and dropped it into the washbin. “Yes, Julio?”

“I need a bandaid.”

She turned. Holding up his hand like an injured paw, she saw blood trickling from his knuckles.

“You didn’t get into another fight, did you?”

“No, the ball hit my hand when I was up to bat.”

He sat down while she rummaged through the drawers.

“Kyrie, when is Nero coming back?”

“He’ll come back when he’s done hunting,” she said automatically, ignoring the feeling spreading through her heart. “We just have to—”

“Wait, I know.”

She returned to the table and kneeled down to his height. She cleaned the cut, nothing more than a dramatic scratch, applied the bandaid. She held his fingers, small and new, for a moment too long.

“ … Kyrie?” he asked worriedly.

“Sorry,” she forced a smile. “Just making sure everything’s okay.”

Julio looked at some point behind her, and then met her eyes. “The evil tree is gone.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So Nero will be back soon.”

“Yes, very soon.”

“And then we’ll all be together.”

“We will.”

“And you’ll be happy again.”

Kyrie blinked. “Happy?”

Julio nodded and hopped off his chair without another word, heading back outside. A moment later there was the crack of a bat and the thud of shoes on dirt. There were shrieks and laughter. But Kyrie remained on her knees.

 _Is that what I sound like?_  She wondered.  _Whenever he says he has to go? Bitter?_

She left the laundry to soak and sat down to sew. The boys came in later and trudged upstairs to shower. By nine o’clock she was the only one awake in the orphanage.

As she finished the laundry, her mind wandered back to what Julio said to her. Had she not looked happy? She was very careful about slipping up in front of the kids. Was it something in her voice? How she carried herself?

Kyrie shook her head.  _Julio has always been observant,_  she told herself. She wasn’t unhappy, staying here, waiting alone. Waiting meant there was someone who needed her to support them, to comfort them, to come home to. Waiting meant staying so that others could go. And she would always be here, whether for the orphans or for Nero … for anyone who needed grace.

Kyrie didn’t want to admit that she had selfish feelings. It wasn’t in her nature to want something for herself if it couldn’t first be offered to someone else. She could never admit she was lonely. If Nero knew she was lonely, saddened in anyway … he might not be to able work in peace. But while she knew why he had to go, and while she knew it was the right thing to do … she also missed the man she loved. She wanted him safe. She wanted him home.

And that was a part of her she could not deny any longer. And when she accepted it … some of the tangled knots in her heart loosened. Though not entirely.

She raised her head and checked the clock again. Almost midnight. She closed her eyes for a moment. Waiting.

 _I’ll wait for you,_  she told herself.  _I’ll wait until you come home._

There was a creaking sound at the front door. The thud of tired boots, the jingle of keys being discarded. The door closed quietly. Someone sneaking, trying not to wake the kids. Kyrie didn’t dare to breathe. She wondered if she could dare to hope. She had just risen from her chair when the kitchen door opened …  and—

“ _Nero_!”

She didn’t care that he was dirty, that he smelled of hot garbage and blood. She didn’t care about anything except that he was there, to touch, to hold, to smell. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a future promise. It was happening now. She buried her face into his chest, she wrapped her arms around his back. Her doubts melted away as Nero’s arms curled around her body, squeezing tight just like always, like he never wanted to let her go.

She pulled away from him and looked up to meet his eyes, stroke his face, ignoring how her hair stuck slightly to the residue on his jacket. Piercing as always, his weary eyes gazed at her with a fondness reserved especially for her. It made all the months of waiting worthwhile.

“ … I’m home,” he said in a small voice.

She smiled. “Welcome back.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to expand beyond that and write about her reaction to his "surprise" but honestly I have no idea how'd I react to a new arm either


End file.
